We all rely on thousands of daily routines to navigate our basic tasks: the order of our morning routines, the clothes we choose to wear, the place where we buy our morning coffee, the route we drive to work, the people with whom we eat lunch, and so on.

The result? Decreased creative thought. The more we rely on our automatic processes, the less we are actually thinking something through; there’s no real opportunity for new insight.

This week’s tips address one of my favorite topics—and one that’s vital to your career: creativity. Anyone can become a subject matter expert, and just about anyone can learn to make sound decisions. But it takes a bit more dedication and bravery to hone your professional creativity.

This week’s first tip focuses on your personal creative ability. Bad news: You’ve grown up and forgotten that once upon a time you were a creative genius. All kids are. It’s amazing how life used to be nothing but imagination and possibilities.

We all strive to be more creative. How many times have we admired a cool campaign, an ingenious product design, a spectacular photograph, a smart logo, or an awesome video clip—and wished we could have come up with those ideas?

So how do we grow in our creativity? The first step is expanding our vision and embracing more of what’s around us. Reading is one way to do that. In his course Drawing Vector Graphics, Von Glitschka equates reading to “thinking with someone else’s head.” And while it’s true that reading—and reading almost anything—will help you become more creative, it’s a slow, gradual process that requires investment over time. You can’t just read one thing and—BAM!—you’re a more creative person.

There is a quick fix however—a way to get an instant energy boost of creativity. And so I present my top one ways to be more creative.

What do we do when we present a great novel idea to our higher–ups and they don’t approve it? We often start generating less novel ideas—and that benefits no one. Listen to creativity expert Stefan Mumaw as he explains how to sell your novel ideas to stakeholders so they see their value, and put them into action.

Know what’s important to your audience and then sell it through that lens.

Creativity is not an external force or a rare skill; it’s a habit that anyone can learn. All you need are the tools to unlock it and you’ll be able to generate better ideas faster. Brainstorming is a fantastic tool to help unleash your creativity and uncover a wealth of unique and relevant ideas—but if approached incorrectly it can also be a wheel-spinning bust. Listen to these great tips from Stefan Mumaw so your next brainstorming session is a creative success!

Find no more than five to seven people to include, and make sure you’re choosing a diverse group of people. Find folks from outside of your department, even outside of your company. Outsiders bring fresh perspectives and while they may not be able to solve the problem as acutely as people who are more familiar with the problem, they may take you down roads you may not have considered.

Civility and politeness are great traits to have in an office environment—but when it comes to brainstorming, they also undermine creativity in a group setting.

This week’s first tip turns brainstorming on its head. It’s often said that harnessing the power of combined ideas and conversation yields more creative results than the same number of people working alone, but it isn’t necessarily true. In fact, when groups fall victim to common brainstorming pitfalls, they aren’t any more creative than individuals. My first tip this week can help you and your team brainstorm successfully.

The business world has a long-standing love/hate relationship with the creative process. Managers regularly profess to embrace creativity, but they’ve usually been trained to avoid failure—and accepting and learning from failure is key to a successful creative process.

The good news is that a small but growing number of adventurous business professionals do recognize that failure must be embraced. They still value the need to work faster, smarter, and cheaper, but don’t run from failure or the lessons that can be learned from it. They accept that no great invention ever materialized out of thin air, but required attempts, trials, and experiments. Each failure provides valuable opportunities to teach us what we need to know in order to succeed. My first tip this week will help you understand how failure can become your best friend.